President Barack Obama has been in office for just over a week, but already he has managed to upset some top leaders in a key constituency — women’s groups — after he personally intervened to get family planning funds stripped from the House stimulus package.

Planned Parenthood led the charge, with President Cecile Richards sending an “urgent” e-mail to supporters on Wednesday decrying the deletion — calling it a “betrayal of millions of low-income women, and it will place an even greater burden on state budgets that are already strained to the breaking point.”

“I’m stunned,” she wrote, urging supporters to call the White House.

Other prominent women leaders joined in expressing their disappointment at Obama’s move — which came after Republicans turned up the heat on Obama by highlighting the family planning proposal in the House bill to spur conservative opposition.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said she met with Democratic leaders in Congress Tuesday and received repeated assurances that the money will be restored in another way — but she made clear she’s watching.

“I think the [Obama administration] should have kept it in there,” Gandy said Wednesday in an interview. “But in their political calculus they felt this was something that would pass Congress rather easily as a stand-alone measure and didn’t think was worth fighting for in the stimulus.”

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Mary Jane Gallagher, president and CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, said she was “devastated” by Obama’s decision.

But she added, “He’s made commitments to fund family planning and do it quickly. ... The president had a tough choice, and he told us he was going to make them and we have to stick with him, and I’m sticking with him because I fully expect really quick action on this,” said Gallagher.

Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs confirmed that Obama personally called Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and asked him to drop the provision, just a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended it on national television Sunday morning.

The president “believed that the policy of increased funding for family planning was the right one,” Gibbs said. “He didn’t believe that this bill was the vehicle to make that happen.”

All of the women’s leaders stopped well short of blasting the new White House over the move — appearing not to want to split with the Obama administration so quickly out of the gate and also confident that Obama stands by them in the long run on the issues they care about most.

As Gandy said, “We were definitely told that the Obama administration has a strong commitment to women’s reproductive rights and family planning. This should not be seen as a lessening of that commitment, only as a change of the vehicle.”

But Obama also made clear in recent days that he’s willing to disappoint some of his most ardent supporters in the abortion rights movement to win what in his mind amount to larger political victories.

Last week, Obama seemingly did his best to downplay his decision to reverse U.S. policy that prevented international organizations that offer abortions from receiving American aid money.

At first, women’s groups hailed Obama for overturning the policy. However, the same groups privately grumbled over Obama’s decision not to issue his new order on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the U.S. Obama waited a day, apparently out of deference to abortion opponents who rally in the capital on the anniversary.

In addition, he signed the order away from cameras, late in the afternoon on a Friday, traditionally the time when newsmakers try to keep news out of the headlines.

At the time, Obama also said he wants to reshape the polarized political debate over abortion by highlighting the need to reduce the number of abortions, not the old political fights over the right to choose.

The political reality is that the family planning funding — as much as hundreds of millions in dollars in aid to states to provide those services to poor families — was becoming a too-perfect talking point that Republicans were using to rally conservative opposition to his stimulus plan.

The proposal would have relieved states of the need to seek a waiver from the federal government before spending Medicaid money on family planning services for women who don’t qualify for the ordinary Medicaid program. Women’s health advocates say such services include not only contraception but cancer screenings and regular checkups for low-income women.

And if there was any doubt about the political dangers in the bill, the House Republican campaign committee sent out news releases Wednesday asking if newly elected Democrats in conservative districts backed what Republicans said was a second provision in the legislation — to provide $335 million in funding to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Any serious breach with women’s groups has the potential to reopen lingering wounds from the Democratic primary campaign. Many women’s organizations and prominent feminists backed Hillary Clinton in the primary and came aboard Obama’s campaign only after it became clear he would be the nominee. There were also complaints from some women that Obama and his backers had not paid enough respect to the struggles American women have faced over the years.

In a statement released to Politico on Wednesday afternoon, Richards tempered her words, saying that although the group was “disappointed” the family planning funds were stripped out, “we are confident that ... we have [Obama’s] support on this and other critical women’s issues.”

But Planned Parenthood’s e-mailed protest was not well received by Democrats on Capitol Hill, said one Democratic Senate aide who asked to remain anonymous. “That newsletter was completely inappropriate,” said the aide, adding that the action made “zero political sense.”

“There are plenty of opportunities to plus up family planning funds,” the aide said. “A lot of Democratic members and female members felt that didn’t belong in the [stimulus] bill.”

Leaders of women’s groups have one of their own in White House communications director Ellen Moran. She served as executive director of EMILY’s List, an organization that raises money for female candidates who support abortion rights. Moran declined an interview request, referring comment to the White House press office.